{"id":21508,"date":"2018-09-06T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-06T16:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21508"},"modified":"2018-09-13T11:32:14","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T15:32:14","slug":"marthas-table-founder-fed-the-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/marthas-table-founder-fed-the-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha’s Table founder fed the community"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Helen Dawn is being remembered for her selfless giving, which resulted in thousands of Aurorans over the last 14 years finding food and fellowship when they needed it most.
\nMs. Dawn, who founded Martha\u2019s Table, a weekly meal program for community members in need, died August 19 at the age of 84.
\nWeek in and year out, bar for a brief summer hiatus, Martha\u2019s Table welcomes everyone for a simple meal of a soup, sandwich and a sweet. It\u2019s a simple formula, but one that has warmed the stomachs and hearts of local families young and old.
\nInitially an independent program of St. Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian Church, of which Ms. Dawn was a life-long member, it continues in full operation out of St. Andrew\u2019s Hall, but now under the umbrella of Welcoming Arms\u2019 Bridging the Gap program.
\n\u201cWe thought maybe we could start something here,\u201d Ms. Dawn told The Auroran in 2014, when Martha\u2019s Table was entering its tenth season. \u201cWe opened up the first day with no publicity or anything and we had 15 people here. Everything was fine. 15 or 20 people could be good, we thought, but the next week we had 45! After that, [our numbers grew] because word had gotten around the community.\u201d
\nSince those early days, Martha\u2019s Table has remained a destination. Thursday mornings on Victoria Street are characterised by heavy on-street parking as a steady stream of people flow into the church hall looking for fresh food and friendship.
\n\u201cOur original philosophy was we just wanted to feed the community who needed something to eat,\u201d said Ms. Dawn. \u201cIf you are hungry, you don\u2019t live well. If you don\u2019t live well, you don\u2019t add to the community. If we can feed you, then you\u2019ll add to this community of Aurora.
\n\u201c[Over the years] it has gotten better because now there are more people interacting. We have people with whom we send food down at the end of the day. We will send food home with people who are really in need, which might be three or four days\u2019 worth of food so they can survive. A lot of them are seniors. The pension doesn\u2019t go as far as you think it does, especially if you are a single person. That is just where it is at \u2013 we want to feed people.\u201d
\nMany people who saw Ms. Dawn in action are paying tribute to the impact she had both within the St. Andrew\u2019s community and Aurora as a whole.
\n\u201cIf you saw her at Martha\u2019s Table, that was her essence in anything she undertook,\u201d says long-time friend Anne Neuman. \u201cShe was always out to greet the people, wanted to sit down and eat her meal with the masses, she didn\u2019t sit with her own group. She intermixed with them because at Martha\u2019s we often get a number of people who are also clients of Bridging the Gap. She was always very cognizant. She could pick them out very quickly and sit down and talk with them so they wouldn\u2019t eat a meal alone and have somebody to talk to.
\n\u201cShe was down to earth and not highfalutin with big ideas with what Martha\u2019s Table could do. She wanted decent soups, she wanted sandwiches and then some sweets with tea and coffee.\u201d
\nSimilar sentiments were shared by Beverley Wood, a founding member of Welcoming Arms:
\n\u201cShe was a lovely, caring, compassionate person who felt very strongly about making a contribution to the community,\u201d said Ms. Wood. \u201cI think that is one of the driving forces for her to have started Martha\u2019s Table.\u201d
\nAdds friend Carol Runstedler: \u201cI don\u2019t really know what drove Helen, but a Christian inside and out. We call her St. Helen.\u201d
\nMs. Dawn, who was predeceased by her husband Robert, known as Jerry, is survived by her children Diane, Murray, Richard, Laura, and Ann, eleven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
\nIn lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations to Ross Memorial Hospital or the Stronach Regional Cancer Centre.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helen Dawn is being remembered for her selfless giving, which resulted in thousands of Aurorans over the last 14 years finding food and fellowship when they needed it most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/2018-09-06-12.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5AU","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 10:03:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}